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Despite the size of the $1.5 trillion nonprofit sector in the U.S.—nearly 10% of the economy—nonprofits are subject to rather minimal independent professional scrutiny beyond annual audits. If you work at a nonprofit and want to assess your own performance or if you are an investor looking to give to the most impactful organizations, how can you spot superior performance? Here is a brief overview of ten things you should look for when determining if a nonprofit organization is a high performer.

Most working professionals spend more than half their time in meetings. Feel the pain? Me, too! Early in my career, I realized that I needed my meetings to be significantly transformed. So I began paying attention and trying to figure out how to lead more effectively. I learned from different sources, and recognized that every meeting was a chance to expand my powers of observation. Here's what I began to notice that makes some meetings better than others.

I’ll be the first to argue that staff (and donors!) need some restorative time after the year-end hustle. But, it is also an opportune time to pause and examine your personal and departmental strategies. I encourage development professionals to take a critical look at three areas that play an important role in the success of your organization: personnel, programs, and patrons.

Years ago, after a long day of facilitating meetings, I was having dinner with some of the meeting participants, and after a big sip of wine, I said, “Gosh, but I bet most of you just want to hit the snooze button on these meetings, right?” Wrong. The group at the table actually enjoyed meetings, with qualifiers. Here are three less-talked about approaches for making meetings meaningful.

Have you ever noticed that often the only way to find out whether or not a company sponsors nonprofits is to visit or call them? Once you know that they sponsor, there’s often no way to find out if they’ve maxed out for the month. Did you know that SponsorLane canbe used to look up local corporate sponsorship opportunities?

One of the questions we get asked most often is how to find federal funding opportunities. People really want to know how to find out about government grants available before they are announced in the Federal Register or on Grants.gov. Here are some tips to help you stay informed so you can plan proactively.

At Aquent, we see the amazing impact that design has every day. Yet we know many nonprofits don’t have the resources to hire designers to help tell their story. That’s why we created our Design for Good grant program. We'll be awarding $5,000 in design grants to worthy nonprofits who partner with designers to support their mission.

Yet creating engaging and ongoing story content can be a real challenge for many nonprofits. You’ve probably heard the content mantra many times - stories focused on those doing the work and those impacted by your organization's work should illustrate your successes, inspire action by donors and volunteers alike, and reinforce your mission’s value firmly in the reader's mind.

The American Youth Policy Forum recently sold the building it owned in Washington, DC for 17 years and moved into leased space around the corner. While the Executive Director had a great team of real estate agents, architects, contractors, builders, tech support, and attorneys, there were still many things she didn’t know about the process that she wish she had.

This year, Foundation Center decided to approach #GivingTuesday in a different way. With our unique perspective in the sector, we get to support so many amazing nonprofits every day. So, this year, we wanted to highlight some of those organizations in a special way through a sweepstakes where 5 nonprofits would win a spot in our Twitter feed for the big day.